ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN ANTIGUA.—We have received an Antigua paper of Feb. 19^th, from which we learn that the Legislature of that Colony had passed an Act for the total Abolition of Slavery on the 1^st of August next. On the 21^st November, the Governor, at the instance of the Legislature, addressed the British Government, desiring to know whether immediate and unconditional abolition on the 1^st of August, would be accepted by the Government, in lieu of the system of gradual emancipation contemplated by the Act of Parliament. On the 13^th of Feb. a reply having been received by the Governor, the Legislature met by special summons. The reply was then read, announcing that the wishes of the Legislature were perfectly consistent with the views of the government, and with the spirit of the Act of Parliament. Thereupon an act was passed by the Assembly on the 13^th Feb., and by the Council on the 15^th, of which the following is the principal section:

Sec. 1.— May it please your most Excellent Majesty, That it may be enacted, and be it enacted by the Governor and Commander in Chief of Your Majesty’s Islands of Antigua, Montserrat, Barbuda, Saint Christopher, Nevis, Anguilla, the Virgin Islands and Dommica and the Council and Assembly of this Your Majesty’s Islands of Antigua, and it is hereby enacted and ordained, by the authority of the same, that all and every person, who on the first day of August, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, shall be holden in slavery within this Colony or its dependencies, shall upon and from and after the said first day of August one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, become, and be to all intents and purposes FREE, and discharged of and from all manner of Slavery, and of and from the obligations imposed by the said herein before in part recited Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, entitled “An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Colonies, for promoting the Industry of Manumitted Slaves, and for compensating the persons hitherto entitled to the services of such Slaves;” and shall be absolutely and forever Manumitted; and that the children thereafter to be born to any such persons, and the offspring of such children, shall in like manner be free from their birth; and that from and after the said first day of August, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, Slavery shall be, and is hereby utterly and forever abolished, and declared unlawful within this colony and its dependencies.

            The vote was unanimous. When signing the bill, the Speaker said, in a tone audible only to those very near him. “The most important paper to which I ever put my hand.”